Tuesday, December 18, 2012

The Other School Massacre

The Connecticut school shooting has prompted the usual calls for guns to be banned.
Earlier this month, Islamist terrorists in Syria killed 28 students and their teacher at school.
Did anybody notice? Of course not. If it happened in the Middle East but Israel isn't involved, it's not news. If it involved an attack on a school but American culture can't be blamed, it's not news.
>Don't even get me started on school attacks in China.

Since the recent spate of attacks, many parents are now worried about their children's safety in schools and have since asked local officials and school governors to step up security at the schools. The education ministry has formed an emergency panel to tackle the violence and some local police authorities have distributed such instruments as steel pitchforks and pepper spray to security guards in schools.

Update: Via comments Steve points out that I missed the murder of 26 schoolchildren in Nigeria earlier this month. I certainly did, having not even read about it presumably for reasons described above.

Gunmen opened fire on students in a northeast Nigerian college, shooting some of them dead and stabbing others. Police say an Islamist extremist group could be behind the attack, but are also looking into possible links with student union elections.

Boko Haram is responsible for between 3,000 to 10,000 deaths. Perhaps instead of guns, we should be talking about banning Islamists? Nah....

MASS killings are always a tragedy. But can we trace the mass killings in the US back to its violent colonial past, when the English spread across the plains killing Indians? This was perhaps the start of the gun culture in a country where there are some 300 million privately held guns.

Then there are America's wars, where all over the world thousands are killed with impunity, encouraged by an immense military industrial complex. And there are comments like those of Mitt Romney, who, in one of the presidential debates, stated that one method of obtaining citizenship for foreigners would be by enlisting in military service.

And now it is possible to drone people to death from the comfort of an armchair. Pity the little children, and also the ones we don't shed a tear over.

Andrew Kovesdy, Templestowe

Like the ones which can't be reflexively blamed on Amerikkka? It is the Left which is doing the droning.